Congressional responsiveness to redistricting induced constituency change: An extension to the 1990s

According to Glazer and Robbins (1985), House members were responsive to redistricting induced changes in the partisan composition of their districts in the 1970s and 1980s. In this paper, I extend the Glazer and Robbins model to the 1990s. It is possible that the high turnover rates observed in the House in the 1990s reflect constituency dissatisfaction with House members' ability or willingness to modify their roll-call vote behavior after redistricting. Using House members' NOMINATE scores as the dependent variable, I examine the effect of changes in the Democratic composition of House districts, on roll-call conservatism. The findings reveal that when the Democratic composition of a district decreases due to redistricting, the roll-call vote behavior of the House member becomes more conservative. Although there is much speculation as to what caused the high levels of turnover in the 1990s, a lack of responsiveness on the part of incumbent House members is not the answer. Furthermore, in contrast to the Glazer and Robbins study, I find that senior members seem to be less responsive than their junior counterparts, a finding that suggests a generational effect may be taking place.